64 bit reverted to 32 bit

rpastor248

Commendable
Oct 24, 2016
13
0
1,510
My Windows 10 64 bit PC has mysteriously switched to 32 bit.I know this because system says it is 32 bit. Most of the programs are 64 bit and will no longer run. I have both os's installed but disabled the 32 bit system. Help.

The computer date has also gone back to May 22, 2016, which was prior to my upgrade to 64 bit. I reset the date to today and restarted. Still in 32 bit OS.

It's as if the 64 bit OS has been replaced by the 32 bit OS or that the PC has been restored to a point before the 64 bit was installed. How can I tell if the ^$ bit OS is still on my hard drive. A parttition that I created is gone, as well.

The last windows imaged backup is 5/22. The one I created after the upgrade is also gone.

I just checked my hard drive and there is nothing newer in the windows directory than 5/21/2016 except bootstat.dat and WindowsUpdate both today.

32 bit programs installed after 5/22 have broken links.

I don't know it this matters but Disk Management says Disk 0 is not initialized
 
Solution
I can see how it happened but why is the real question.

I guess your drives are formatted as GPT. The UEFI boot method doesn't look for a specific disk when booting up the first day, it looks for a file name instead, and then records the path leading to that file name in the Windows boot manager next to every drive it finds with it. It goes by this list of disks found by the Windows Boot Manager. Every single GPT hdd has its own individual number and the list of disks stores the boot order using those numbers. So unlike a legacy system, if a UEFI file system cannot find that file name at boot it will scan every drive in the PC until it locates it and will then use it

Every win 10 install on GPT should have an EFI partition, so your...

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
The only way to go from 32bit to 64bit is a fresh install, so there is no way it can back the other way as there is nothing to return to. So the question above is a good one, did you have win 10 on other drive and its now using that install since drive 0 appears to have gone awol?

Unless it did a factory reset but then the program files shouldn't be there to have broken links, or you somehow ran a backup that reverted to that date.

Is that date special in anyway? was it a day you installed win 10 or something? or the day you upgraded to 64bit?
 

rpastor248

Commendable
Oct 24, 2016
13
0
1,510
I had 32 bit originally installed. Did a clean install on partitioned drive. Created dual boot. Once I took care of housekeeping, I deleted 32 bit from drive. I created an image backup and backed up entire system. No the only image backup is the one I made on 5/22/16 prior to 64 bit install. It is as if the computer restore that image.
 

rpastor248

Commendable
Oct 24, 2016
13
0
1,510
I believe the 64 bit system was on the partition that is no longer initialized. It seems as if the partition was uninitialized or otherwise un accessible and when the computer tried to runup, it couldn't Find the files. The computer then automatically restored the image file. Is this even possible?
 

rpastor248

Commendable
Oct 24, 2016
13
0
1,510
Drive C is SSD. I created partition and clean installed 64 bit W10. On another drive, there is a windows folder dated after 5/22, but I don't know how it got there
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
I don't know, i was just wondering what drives looked like as trying to work out how windows reverts to a backup randomly without you doing anything to make it. As far as I know, windows doesn't have that feature built in.

where was the backup stored? Was it on the drive its now using to boot from? or on an external drive and its reimaged another partition to install win 10?
 
The only scenario where what the OP describes is even possible is in the case of 2 physical drives, One drive with Windows 64-bit, and the other with Windows 32-bit in a dual boot configuration. One of the two drives fails or is otherwise taken out of service, leaving the other as the only bootable drive in the system. Windows cannot spontaneously revert to an older (and incompatible) version without human intervention.
 

rpastor248

Commendable
Oct 24, 2016
13
0
1,510
It was on a separate drive and was the image I made just prior to the new install. I had the system setup to do daily backups on the same drive. They don't exist as far as I can tell.

I can't even find a restore point after 5/22 and I know they were there after every windows update. This is the log in $SysReset folder:
2016-10-24 06:49:40, Info RjvStartLogging: Started logging to [C:\$SysReset\Logs\SetupAct_offline.log]
2016-10-24 06:49:40, Info Entering RjvFactoryImageAvailable
2016-10-24 06:49:40, Info [systemreset.exe] Enter WinReGetConfig
2016-10-24 06:49:40, Info [systemreset.exe] Parameters: configWinDir: NULL
2016-10-24 06:49:40, Info [systemreset.exe] WinRE config file path: C:\Windows\system32\Recovery\ReAgent.xml
2016-10-24 06:49:41, Info [systemreset.exe] winreGetWinReGuid returning 0X490
2016-10-24 06:49:41, Info [systemreset.exe] ReAgentConfig::ReadBcdInfo WinRE disabled, WinRE Guid could not be determined (0X490)
2016-10-24 06:49:41, Info [systemreset.exe] System is WimBoot: FALSE
2016-10-24 06:49:41, Info [systemreset.exe] WinRE image validated
2016-10-24 06:49:41, Info No OEM image specified
2016-10-24 06:49:41, Error Failed to query registry for ESD image index: 0x2
2016-10-24 06:49:41, Error Failed to search for an ESD image. Last error: 0x0
2016-10-24 06:49:41, Error Returning FALSE from RjvFactoryImageAvailable
2016-10-24 06:49:44, Info RjvStopLogging: Stopped logging to [C:\$SysReset\Logs\SetupAct_offline.log]
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
So drive c (SSD) is drive 0 that no longer appears? what brand drive is it? might be an idea to run HDTune trial on it and see what it reports its health as. If it works, you might be best fresh installing win 10 on ssd and looking into why your backups aren't working.

if you fresh install, remove the hdd before you do as win 10 likes to share its boot partitions around and taking drives out stops it. It can be a pain if 2nd drive dies and you suddenly can't boot.
 

rpastor248

Commendable
Oct 24, 2016
13
0
1,510
Somehow the drive letters and assignments of my drives got all mixed up. I forced the computer to boot from the SSD and disabled all other options. Voila. Running 64 bit again. It has even renamed the drives. Apparently the boot preferences got screwed up in the BIOS. I have no idea how this could have happened. Looks like all is well, but still a mystery as to the cause.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
I would remove the hdd as it isn't working as back up and only confuses the bios as you now know. Or just format it and use it as storage

glad you fixed it :)

how old is motherboard? could be the cmos battery needs to be replaced as they die of old age. Its used to store boot order and other settings motherboard needs to remember.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
This exact thing happened to another member a few months ago.
Wife turns on her PC...poof, exactly as it was several months before.

Turns out, he had cloned from old drive to new drive.
Left the OS as it was on the old drive.
New drive is first in the boot order, no problem.
Until the SATA cable breaks.
Power on, BIOS sees nothing in the first selection, drops down to the next drive in the boot order. The one with the old OS.
Boots up just fine, except that everything is 6 months out of date.

"What the..."

This is why 2 drives with the exact same OS often leads to major confusion.
 

rpastor248

Commendable
Oct 24, 2016
13
0
1,510
It was just booting incorrectly. The CMOS is good. The HDD is for storage only. The old 32 bit windows files (left over from a dual boot system) were on it and that what booted up. When I deleted the dual boot option, I forgot to delete the system files. Once I changed the boot preferences, all is good. I still want to know how the BIOS changed the boot preference from my SSD to the HDD.
 

rpastor248

Commendable
Oct 24, 2016
13
0
1,510


Same symptoms only the cause was not cables or drives. The boot menu was changed in the BIOS, and I have no idea how.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
I can see how it happened but why is the real question.

I guess your drives are formatted as GPT. The UEFI boot method doesn't look for a specific disk when booting up the first day, it looks for a file name instead, and then records the path leading to that file name in the Windows boot manager next to every drive it finds with it. It goes by this list of disks found by the Windows Boot Manager. Every single GPT hdd has its own individual number and the list of disks stores the boot order using those numbers. So unlike a legacy system, if a UEFI file system cannot find that file name at boot it will scan every drive in the PC until it locates it and will then use it

Every win 10 install on GPT should have an EFI partition, so your SSD and backup would have had one. It seems something odd happened to force UEFI to rescan the drives and it missed the SSD and used the HDD instead forcing you back onto 32bit.

I don't know what or why

Now if the 32bit system had been an update from win 7 and was in MBR format, its possible the ssd didn't answer the boot request in time, the system didn't find any EFI partitions to boot and being a clever motherboard, restarted and swapped to legacy boot method and found the MBR partition on the old hdd and went from there. That is possible, all it takes is an auto setting in the boot method area in bios

I would test hard drives and ssd just to confirm there nothing wrong with them. cause this isn't normal :)
 
Solution

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